About two weeks ago the hard drive on my primary pc (desktop) died. I got a NEW one from goharddrive.com for 29.95 (delivered cross country in 3 days without a shipping fee). But since it was different from the original the doggone restore disks I created when it was new wouldn't reinstall the win7.

A few years ago I downloaded and fooled around with mint 10 so I installed it (trouble free) on the pc. Since it was no longer supported I installed mint 14.1 Cinnamon. I LOVE it. I just installed it on my laptop but left win7 (I don't know why????) however mint is first and default on the loader.

Linuxmint is great. I tried ubuntu during this crisis but it simply is not NEARLY as user friendly as mint. While I'm on the subect: the Unity desktop SUX - what a mess!!!!

I haven't looked at windows since I installed mint on my laptop and booted to win 7 just to see if it was still there.

Mint is a TRULY GREAT gift to us made possible by an incredibly dedicated, talented, and selfless group of people.

DrHu wrote:OK, so you might try a minimal install of the OS (win7 ?), and then try your restore files..--I assume a restore needs a formatted and installed OS to reapply (restore files/settings into..)

By minimal install, all I mean is remove any settings/applications you are allowed to before installation--such as windows default apps (games and so on.)

The Lenovo pc came without any install or restore discs at all After you set it up you create a set of (3) dvd's that will put it back as it was. Those dvd's don't recognize the new hdd.